


december 10th: the brain inside my muddled head

by watergator



Series: december fic advent 2018 [10]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 20:10:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16939875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watergator/pseuds/watergator
Summary: prompt: apathydan sees his therapist





	december 10th: the brain inside my muddled head

“So would you say you’re an empathetic person, Dan?”  
  
Kate crosses one leg over the other and looks over at Dan deeply. Dan sits on the opposite couch and sinks back comfortably; long gone are the days he’d sit deadly still on the edge of his seat. He’s grown more comfortable over the years to slouch here on his therapist’s sofa and make his self at home.  
  
He shrugs, “I guess.”  
  
He knows it’s not a good enough answer for her to drop it, but he kinda doesn’t want her to. He wants to leave it open ended for her to keep asking him.  
  
“Why? Do you think there’s times you’re not empathetic? Where you feel more apathetic?” She asks, and pushes her glasses up her slim nose.  
  
Dan looks away from her, and squeezes the little plush pillow he holds in his lap, and shrugs again.  
  
“Yeah, sometimes. It’s hard.”  
  
He hears her scribble something down with her pencil and looks up just as she stops.  
  
“Hard?” she prompts, and Dan knows she’s getting him to open up, and explain it himself in his own words.  
  
He sits up just a little, “Yeah, like I dunno. It’s hard to tell when I am and when I’m not.”  
  
It’s true; he’s here today for a reason because he’d brought it up last week, asking an off-handed question about certain personality disorders, and she’d tucked her greying hair behind her ears and smiled and told him it’d be open for discussion next session.  
  
So here he was, wondering if the feeling’s he felt or didn’t feel were real.  
  
“Does it vary from certain situations, would you say?” Kate leans forward, setting her pencil and paper aside onto the coffee table that sits between them.  
  
Dan shrugs, yet again and sighs, “Maybe.”  
  
Kate simply nods and looks like she’s deep in thought when she sits up and smiles,  
  
“Dan, how much of narcissistic personality disorder do you know about? I assume that you perhaps researched about it before asking me about it, no?”  
  
Dan nods, and swallows thickly at the sound of those three words, “Yeah, a little. But I guess google can bloody diagnose you with absolutely anything, huh?” he huffs a laugh, to which Kate smiles,  
  
“Of course.”  
  
Dan looks back down at his pillow and begins to pick at the loose thread of string that hangs from one the edges.  
  
“I just guess sometimes I don’t always feel bad for the things I do at first,” Dan says in a quiet voice. He likes Kate, he trusts her and they’ve built up a good friendship over the years of him sat here talking to her about things that worry him and scare him, but he still feels that weird open vulnerability at times around her.  
  
She nods, and hums, pressing him to continue.  
  
“If I was to like, I dunno, upset Phil, I usually feel bad about it. Sometimes it takes me a while to realise I’m being an ass,” he looks up at her, “but that could just be me, right? Being a twat?”  
  
Kate laughs through her nose and pushes her glasses up again, “True. Not everything is always linked to our mentality. Personality and traits play a large part too, in how we act and feel.”  
  
Dan nods, taking in what she says.  
  
“So like, sometimes I’ll say something…shitty, like, on a liveshow or something and people will get pissed and I-“ he pauses to take a breath, “I guess I never really think about how I’m making people feel. And sometimes I just ignore it.”  
  
He hates that. He hates the way it makes his insides twist and churn inside him. There’s been too many moments in his life where he’ll open his mouth, say the wrong things, cause upset and hurt to the people that look up to him, and he’ll not understand what he’s done wrong. Not until sometimes Phil has to point it out and explain it to him.  
  
And sometimes even then, Dan struggles to find that understanding that should come naturally to him.  
  
“Would you say you feel more empathic to people you have closer relations to, like Phil or family, than perhaps your audience?” Kate asks, picking up her paper and pencil again. Dan watches her write something down quick before answering.  
  
“I guess.” He mumbles, and picks the thread from the cushion as it begins to unravel.  
  
“And why is that?”  
  
Dan huffs and pushes the cushion off his lap, “I guess it’s because it’s easier to read. I know if I’ve upset or hurt Phil, I can tell because he’s like, right there? You know. With the audience it’s different.”  
  
He takes in a deep breath and blows out, and looks up at Kate who hums and nods with a smile.  
  
“I think you’ve just understood your own problem there, Dan.” She tells him with a raise of a brow, to which Dan just frowns, confused.  
  
“You find it hard to be empathic to an audience you’re not fully connected to,” she tells him.   
  
“But I am,” Dan shakes his head. “I am connected to them.” He’d spent years building up a relationship with his and Phil’s audience to the point of comfort they had now. But Kate shakes her head.  
  
“You have a certain relationship with them, Dan. Not a personal one. You never will, not with that many people,” she says. “You can’t count for that many people’s feelings.”  
  
Dan chews and his bottom lip, brows still furrowed in confusion, despite him almost understanding what she’s saying.  
  
“But, it doesn’t stop me from being stupid. I can’t keep making mistakes and hurting people. They won’t like that,” Dan says.  
  
Kate sits back in her chair comfortably and shrugs, much like Dan had done. “Call it basic advice, but it’s life, Dan. You’ll learn from these things, build up a stronger relationship with them for it, but don’t expect to understand them all for it.”  
  
Dan nods slowly. She has a point.  
  
“You’re not a narcissistic, Dan, if that’s what you’re worried about. You have felt love and happiness and you’ve expressed a lot of joy in your life, yeah?”  
  
Dan nods again.  
  
“You can’t expect yourself to feel emotionally responsible for millions of people. If anything that makes you extremely empathetic. The opposite of apathy, really,” Kate laughs lightly.

Dan laughs dryly, “So what you’re saying is that I’m not a robot incapable of human emotion?”  
  
Kate laughs back, “No, Dan. I’d say that you definitely struggle sometimes, with certain emotions. A job like yours is hard to have, and juggling that many of expectations at once, along with your own, will cloud that, perhaps.”  
  
“Cloud it?” Dan asks.  
  
“Yes, cloud them. You think too much of what people think of you to take time to think about yourself and focus on your own emotions.” She nods, and crosses her legs over again.  
  
Dan sits back, and nods, understanding it a little clearer now.  
  
“Yeah. I guess that makes sense.”  
  
Kate smiles warmly at him. “You’re not an apathetic person, Dan. You just need to work on knowing how you feel before focusing on how others may or may not feel.”  
  
Dan nods, and lets her continue,  
  
“For example, when a liveshow goes all wrong, don’t worry so much on how they’ll feel at first. Think about how it made you feel, and how you can amend the problem with talking about it. You don’t have to go full therapy session on them, but maybe try to understand why it was what you did, before trying to understand why it’s upset others.”  
  
That makes a lot of sense, Dan thinks.   
  
“Because chances are, once you’ve come to understand your feelings towards it, they’ll be similar to how your audience are feeling, and you’ll have better understanding of how to tackle it.”  
  
Dan sighs, and rubs his hand over his face. “Fuck, that’s like, the simplest thing ever. Why did I never actually think of doing that?” he groans, his voice cracking slightly.  
  
He pulls his hand away to look up at Kate who gives him a warm smile, and chuckles,  
  
“Doesn’t matter. You can start now.” She smiles.  
  
Dan smiles back. “So you’re not gonna diagnose me with a million different personality disorders? I’m not a sociopath?” he jokes, picking the cushion back off beside him and pressing it to his stomach.  
  
Karen laughs and tucks her hair behind her ear, “God, no, Dan. You’re alright. In the grand scheme of things, at least.”  
  
Dan snorts, grateful that he has a therapist who can feel comfortable enough to poke fun at him like that after feeling so open and scared.  
  
“Good. Thanks, Kate,” he smiles.  
  
She nods, and stretches her legs out. “No worries. It’s what I’m here for.”   
  
Dan just smiles, feeling a little less heavy that he did when he walked in here an hour ago.  
  
“So,” she claps her hands together, “you told me last week that you’ve had talks about a particular permanent house? Tell me this one isn’t haunted or has gas leaks out to kill you both?”   
  
Dan just laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on tumblr !! @watergator


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